Kirk (foreground) and Sulu (center) take on Romulans on a planetary drill in "Star Trek."

He had to figure out a way to include action that would please a modern audience and utilize current movie-making techniques -- while still having everything ring true with characters that fans know extremely well. He answers this call throughout his film.

Perhaps the best example is in a powerful scene called "Space Jump, " in which his actors must sky dive from space into the atmosphere of Vulcan, a planet in danger of being destroyed by vengeful Romulans. They're attempting to land on the platform of a drill boring deep into the planet.

With the help of Chris Pine, who portrays a young Capt. James T. Kirk, and John Cho, who plays Hikaru Sulu, Abrams explains just how they did it. Watch the actors make their dive »

J.J. Abrams: The sequence in the middle of the movie, the kind of centerpiece of it is this space jump.

Chris Pine: What's unbelievable about that -- and I'm not a big effects guy -- it didn't kind of blow me away as much until I watched the movie.

Abrams: One of the things about this movie was I wanted it to be big. I wanted it to feel like there was this huge scale.

John Cho: It was fun and challenging. It was challenging in the sense that I haven't done action yet in my career, so this was completely new turf for me.